Top 5 Proven Email Lead Generation Tactics + Best Practices

Finding potential customers and turning them into paying customers is the ultimate marketing challenge. But there is, in fact, a solution that solves this problem like no other, and that’s email lead generation. It’s a key component of any business growth strategy, offering a steady stream of strategic, cost-effective growth.

And it doesn’t have to be hard to do! In this guide, we’ll explore all things email lead generation, and provide actionable tips for small business owners looking to harness its power.

What is Email Lead Generation?

Email lead generation entails enticing potential customers to join your email list – these people become your leads. This lead generation process typically involves collecting names and email addresses through an opt-in form, and by offering something of value in return. Once you have their contact information, you can build relationships by sending targeted content that converts leads into paying customers. 

(Before we really get started: if you’re new to email marketing and would like to learn more about the basics, please check out our comprehensive guide on what email marketing is and how to get started.)

What Are The Benefits of Email Lead Generation?

While an email lead generation campaign may seem like a pretty straight-forward concept, its benefits are much more far reaching. They include: 

1. Attract Clients Automatically: With just a sign-up form, you can attract a steady stream of potential customers. This automation works around the clock so that you can capture leads without any extra effort.
2. Save Money on Marketing: Once you’ve set up your opt-in form or lead magnet, the costs primarily involve maintaining your email list and creating content, both of which are minimal compared to traditional advertising expenses.
3. Reach Interested Customers: Because your target audience includes those who’ve already shown interest in your products or services, your marketing dollars are more likely to result in actual sales, providing an exceptionally high return on investment (ROI).
4. Increase Your Sales: Guiding leads through your sales funnel with targeted email marketing campaigns allows you to turn prospects into paying customers.

How to Generate Email Leads?

Now that we’re all on the same page about the importance of email lead generation, let’s dive into the different ways you can attract new sales leads. 

1. Add a Sign-Up Form to Your Website

Online sign-up forms are the go-to way to start gathering subscriber email addresses for your list. By collecting the emails of those that want to hear more from you – about products, services, promotions and more – you can build a list of potential customers that can be turned into loyal customers over time.

Best practices for creating effective lead generation forms include:

• Use an eye-catching design that aligns with your brand’s visual style and personality. 
• Keep the copy persuasive but straightforward. Clearly communicate the benefits and incentives of signing up. 
• Make sure the value you offer is relevant to your business and products so that subscribers genuinely want to build and continue a relationship with you.
• Consider offering a sign-up incentive, such as a discount.
• Embed forms in the footer, as a page-break, in blog posts, or by using slide-in animations after a short delay.
• Limit form fields to only the most essential information, ideally just email and perhaps first name. Conversion rates drop with each added field. 

With all this in mind, you can easily create sign-up forms, add them to your site or landing pages, and start growing your list with SiteGround’s Lead Generation Plugin for WordPress.

2. Offer a Lead Magnet

A particularly effective method for gathering email addresses is with a lead magnet. This typically comes in the form of a free resource, such as a digital product (ebooks, research reports, mini-courses, etc) that you provide in exchange for an email address. This type of content is ideal because it requires a one-time effort to produce, and can generate leads over time, thus offering a high return on investment. 

The primary purpose of a lead magnet is, of course, to collect email addresses, but it’s important not to give away all your valuable information for free. So when creating a lead magnet, aim to provide more value than your free content but less than what you offer in your paid products. Consider what your potential customers are looking for when they first land on your site, identify their pain points, and provide solutions. 

By way of example, check out our free email marketing course. This is a SiteGround lead magnet, and follows the principles we’ve discussed above.

3. Use Web Views to Promote Your Emails

A web view is a version of your email that can be seen in a web browser. It’s particularly useful for sharing your content with a broader audience beyond those that are signed up for your  email list. 

You can implement this feature in the following ways:

• Include a “View this email in your browser” link in your emails
• Share the link on social
• Make past newsletters viewable by website visitors by embedding links to them on your site

Via each of these channels, be sure to include a clear call to action to sign up for your emails so that those intrigued by your content can opt in to receive more.

4. Ask Your Subscribers To Share Your Email

Never hesitate to ask for a little help! Reach a wider audience by encouraging current subscribers to share your emails with friends, family, or social networks. In doing so, you’re tapping into a highly effective email marketing strategy, as people tend to trust recommendations from those they know.

You can easily encourage this kind of sharing by embedding a sign-up link in your emails. This link can direct to a landing page with a sign-up form, where you can highlight the benefits of subscribing. You can also incentivize sharing by offering rewards (such as a discount) to those who make referrals.

5. Promote Sign-ups with QR Codes

QR codes are a powerful tool for small businesses to grow their email lists. With just a smartphone, users can scan the QR code and instantly go to a landing page with a sign-up form, and possibly a special offer. Consider using create QR codes for free with Adobe Express to place codes on posters, business cards, promotional materials, and elsewhere.

How to Design Successful Lead Generation Emails

You’ve got the leads, and now we must keep them engaged and moving through your sales funnel. As such, it’s important to write and design your emails for maximum impact. Here’s how you can craft compelling lead generation emails that capture attention and drive conversions.

1. Write Attention-Grabbing Subject Lines

To create captivating subject lines, focus on understanding and addressing your audience’s pain points, needs, and interests. Incorporate actionable language and a sense of urgency to prompt immediate interaction. Keep your subject lines concise, ideally under 50 characters, to ensure visibility on most email clients and mobile devices.

2. Short Writing for Reader Engagement

To maximize reader interest, keep your emails to-the-point and engaging. Short paragraphs, bullet points, and clear, direct language make your emails easily digestible, especially on mobile devices where most emails are opened. Need help crafting your content? Turn to AI. Our blog post on how to write AI email prompts that boost engagement offers valuable tips and examples to help you take advantage of the power of AI.

3. Use Images

Given that images are processed much faster than text, relevant visuals can quickly and effectively convey your message, making your emails more appealing and easier for leads to understand.

4. Offer Valuable Content

By offering your leads useful content that solves problems and provides insights, you nurture them through your sales funnel. This keeps them interested, positions your brand as a trusted authority, and aids in the process of converting leads into loyal customers.

Here’s what to keep in mind to help you provide especially valuable content:

• Tailor your content by audience: Use insights from lead segmentation (which we’ll discuss more about shortly) to address your leads’ specific interests. For example, if a lead downloaded an ebook on SEO, follow up with emails that offer advanced SEO tips, industry trends, and related case studies. 
• Consistent Quality – Maintain a high standard of quality across all your content. Whether it’s a detailed guide, a success story, or a simple tip, ensure it is well-researched, well-written, and provides clear value.

5. Add Strong & Strategic Calls to Action

To effectively convert leads, your emails must include strong, strategically placed calls to action (CTAs). Use action-oriented words like “attend,” “download,” “register,” “read,” and “try now” to guide your leads toward the next step. 

Not sure how best to place the CTA or design your email? Email marketing platforms like SiteGround offer ready-made templates that implement design best practices aimed to grasp interest and motivate action. You can learn more about strategic email designs via our guide on easy-to-design templates.

Email Campaign Examples that Turn Leads into Sales

With email creation mastered, the next important step is to strategically move leads through your sales funnel. To do this, you’ll want to create a customer journey, welcoming them first, and then thoughtfully offering valuable and diverse content that nudges them closer and closer to a sale. Here are sample email topics that you may wish to include in your lead-nurturing process.

Welcome Email

Welcome emails are essential in a lead generation campaign, marking the initial interaction between your brand and new subscribers. 

Key Elements of a Welcome email:

• Introduction: Clearly introduce who you are and what your business does.
• Value Proposition: Highlight what makes your brand unique and what value your content will bring to their inbox.
• Expectations: Explain what kind of content subscribers can expect, how often they’ll hear from you, and any other relevant details.
• CTA: Encourage new subscribers to connect further by linking to your social media, website, or landing page for digital products.

Educational Email

Educational emails offer practical solutions and insights related to your product or service, and play a key role in guiding leads through the sales funnel. In doing so, you position your brand as a trusted authority and resource, building credibility and keeping subscribers engaged.

Key Elements of an Educational Email:

• Problem Identification: Start by identifying a common problem your audience faces.
• Solution Offering: Offer practical advice, tips, or solutions to address this problem.
• Resources: Link to additional resources like blog posts, eBooks, or webinars for more in-depth information.

Product or Service Explainers

These emails provide detailed information about your offerings, highlighting how to solve specific problems or improve the lives of your subscribers. This generates more value for your product or services, fosters trust, drives conversions, and creates loyal customers that come back for more. 

Key Elements of a Product or Service Explainer Email:

• Feature Highlight: Focus on one or two key features of your product or service.
• Benefit Explanation: Explain how these features solve specific problems or improve the user’s life.
• Visuals: Use images, videos, or infographics to make the explanation more engaging.
• Testimonial: Include a short testimonial from a satisfied customer to add credibility.

Product or Service Updates

Update emails keep your potential clients informed about new features, improvements, or changes to your offerings, ensuring they stay current with the latest developments. By regularly communicating updates, you reinforce the value of your products or services and remind your leads why they should consider becoming customers. You can also re-engage inactive leads by keeping your services top of mind.

Key Elements of Product or Service Update Email:

• Update Announcement: Clearly announce the new feature or product.
• Benefits Overview: Explain the benefits and how they enhance the user experience.
• Usage Tips: Provide tips on how to get the most out of the new feature.
• CTA: Encourage users to try out the new feature or learn more about the update.

Social Proof

These emails leverage the experiences and testimonials of existing customers to validate your products or services, making them more appealing to potential customers. 

Key Elements of a Social Proof Email:

• Testimonials: Include quotes from satisfied customers.
• Case Studies: Share detailed stories of how your product or service solved specific problems.
• Reviews: Link to third-party reviews or ratings.
• Social Media: Embed social media posts where customers talk about your product.

Discounts

Discount emails are highly effective, as they provide an immediate incentive for potential customers to make a purchase. By offering discounts, you create a sense of urgency and exclusivity, encouraging leads to act quickly.

Key Elements of a Discount Email:

• Personalization: Address the lead by name and reference their past interactions or interests.
• Offer Details: Clearly state the discount or special offer.
• Urgency: Create a sense of urgency with limited-time offers.
• CTA: Encourage immediate action to take advantage of the deal.

Email Lead Generation Best Practices

Now that we’ve covered how to effectively generate leads and craft compelling email content, let’s explore some essential best practices to maximize your email lead generation success.

1. Leverage Email Automation

As we’ve just discussed, sending different types of emails can help move your leads through your sales funnel. A great way to put this into place is to automate the process. That is, depending on how your lead was acquired – whether they signed up for a newsletter, downloaded an ebook, or joined a webinar – you can create tailored email journeys, during which a sequential flow of emails is sent to those subscribers. The purpose of an automated email journey is to nurture your leads, build trust and credibility over time, and eventually lead to conversions.

2. Infuse branding

An essential tool in any marketing toolbox is branding, and it’s something you should definitely keep in mind as you craft your content. By transmitting a consistent voice, look and feel, you can build brand loyalty. To put this into action, when you produce emails, consider creating and saving templates that feature your branding, including colors and other brand elements.

3. Segment Your Leads

Lead segmentation entails dividing your list of potential customers into smaller groups based on their activities, actions or characteristics. By segmenting your audience, you can send more personalized and targeted messages, thus speaking to their particular needs and interests, and more effectively moving them through your sales funnel. 

Consider segmenting your audience based on sign-up form location, type of lead magnet, level of email engagement, purchase behavior, location, industry and/or job title. Get as creative as you’d like with segmentation criteria, then target your messages accordingly, and test your results.

4. Conduct A/B Tests

To get the most out of your email lead generation strategy and keep improving your approach, it’s important to do A/B testing. This involves sending slightly modified versions of an email to different groups of your subscribers to see which version performs best. 

You can test every component of your emails to find the optimal combination that drives engagement and conversions – but do keep in mind: you should only test one variation at a time. Here are some important elements to consider:

• Subject Lines: Test different subject lines to see which ones increase open rates. Experiment with length, tone, urgency, and personalization. 
• Images: Experiment with the size, type, and placement of images to see what enhances interaction.
• Design and Layout: Vary the overall design – such as single-column versus multi-column, or even different color schemes – to find out what is most visually appealing and easy to navigate. To learn more about using colors effectively in email marketing, check out our helpful blog post – The Importance & Impact of Colors in Email Marketing.
• CTA Buttons: Test different call-to-action buttons, including their text, color, size, and placement. 

After a few rounds of A/B tests, you will have a better understanding of which elements perform best. Continuously applying these insights will help you create more effective email marketing campaigns, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

5. Don’t Use a No-Reply Address

Using an email other than a no-reply address can benefit your email success. Indeed, the more personalized nature of a proper email address encourages interaction and builds trust. It can also improve deliverability, as emails from no-reply addresses are more likely to be marked as spam by email providers. (You can learn more about landing your emails in inboxes by reading our guide on ensuring high email deliverability.)

6. Maintain Email List Hygiene

Over time, your email list will accumulate leads who are no longer active or engaged. As such, it’s important to regularly clean your list through a process called email scrubbing to remove such leads. This will improve engagement rates, email deliverability, and allow for more accurate performance metrics. That’s because you’re weeding out low-quality leads, and also reducing the chances of your emails landing in spam.

Practical Tips for Email Lead Scrubbing

• Set a Regular Schedule: Aim to clean up your email list every three to six months. 
• Identify Inactive Leads: Look for leads who haven’t opened or clicked on your emails in the last six months to a year. 
• Send Re-Engagement Campaigns: Before removing inactive leads, send a re-engagement email offering an easy way to confirm their interest.
• Remove Unresponsive Leads: If inactive leads don’t respond within two weeks, move them to an inactive list, and eventually remove them from your list altogether. 
• Monitor Your Metrics: Regularly check your email metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates. If you notice a sudden drop in engagement or increase in unsubscribes, it might be time for another cleanup.

To learn more about maintaining a high-quality email list, read our guide on how to build an email list.

Measure Lead Generation Success

Close the loop on your email lead generation efforts by tracking your success. Here are the key components you’ll want to keep an eye on:

1. Count Your Email Leads – Track how many potential leads you attract, such as those who sign up for your newsletter, download an ebook, or register for a webinar. Ensure you separate these new leads from existing clients to keep your data accurate.
2. Track Conversions to Clients – Next, track how many of these email leads actually become paying customers. This shows how effective your email marketing campaigns are at attracting the right people.
3. Measure Cost Per Lead (CPL) – Look at how much you’re spending to get each email lead. Do this by adding up all related expenses, including email marketing platform costs, content creation, distribution costs, lead magnet production, advertising, and any overheads. Then, divide the total cost of your email campaigns by the number of leads you acquired. Lower costs mean more efficient spending.

What’s Next

Email lead generation stands as a powerful strategy to connect with potential clients and grow your business. By leveraging the direct and personal nature of email marketing, you can build and nurture relationships with new prospects, guiding them through the sales funnel and converting them into loyal customers.

To do this, you will need a powerful email marketing platform, and SiteGround Email Marketing is the perfect partner. Create and send professional campaigns, manage your subscriber lists, and track your results with ease. Our tool includes its own Lead Generation Plugin for WordPress, but also integrates seamlessly with popular WordPress forms like WPForms, Elementor Pro Forms, and Contact Form 7, making it even easier to capture and nurture leads directly from your website. Discover the power of simple, effective email marketing today.